The Endless Manuscript
by Nota Lone
Summary: [Farenheit 451 can you belive there's not a catagory for this?] A oneshot based on my theory that the old woman is Beatty's gradeschool teacher.


The Endless Manuscript

Blaring and obnoxious, the bell rang. Still, it sounded musically to my ears. I needed to burn something. Montag spouted too much stupidity today. Firemen may have extinguished fires once, but not _the_ truth, only _a_ truth, an antiquated truth. "Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true."

Sliding down the pole to the ground, my hands tingled and burned. I needed the pain to concentrate. What goaded Montag to this? His brow wrinkled and his gait quickened as he went past the hound. Perhaps it knew, it knew what traitorous thoughts sabotaged my best fireman. "A man with a sharp wit. Someone ought to take it away from him before he cuts himself." What sort of fool would arm Montag?

The truck screeched to a stop in front of the condemned building. Idiots, why the hell can't they slow down? As we rushed out into the house I could feel something wrong, something amiss. It seemed as if I knew this place. I dismissed the thoughts. "Intuition is the clear conception of the whole at once." How funny that I remember this now.

I cursed under my breath as I walked through the door. Damn police hadn't come to take away the offender. This really shouldn't have surprised me. The police usually have better things to do, like smoking, drinking, or becoming otherwise intoxicated.

"'Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.'"

I slapped her, partly because she refused to comply, and partly because I didn't want to hear it. Not now, not ever again.

"Enough of that," my voice was gruffer than I remember it ever being, "Where are they?"

"You know where they are or you wouldn't be here."

A fireman –one fireman, every fireman, I didn't know which one and didn't much care– held out the card. They raced off to the books without me, I lagged behind, trying to remember-

"Good evening, Master Beatty."

God, God, I knew that voice. I know that voice. Now I can never forget it.

"Good evening, Miss Pfirman."

Of all the houses to burn, of all the people I once knew, of all the days to do it.

"You always revered your books."

I chose to ignore her, picking-up a book and lighting it aflame.

She made a clicking sound with her tongue. "Why take your venom out on Huckleberry Finn? You read that so many times during math class. You wrote a superb review on it. You earned a ninety-nine percent on it, if I remember correctly, only a point off for the incorrect use of 'there'."

"How are you so lucid now? Didn't I speak to a doddering old lady a moment ago?"

"Oh, I've been a doddering old lady for some time now. People sometimes dismiss the idiosyncrasies of old fools. It worked surprisingly well up until this point."

Not until then did I realize I whispered the entire conversation, and she played along.

"Why? Why not attempt to disgrace, to denounce me now?"

She smiled the same smile that acknowledged my fourth-grade achievements. "Because of the foolish old woman who still believes in her star pupil."

"There's nothing left to believe."

Rushing, rushing down the firemen swelled around me.

I abandoned my whisper once more. "Come on, woman!"

"You can't ever have my books."

"You know the law. Where's your common sense?" I continued ranting loudly, but I can't remember what I said now. An allusion to the tower of Babel, I suppose. Montag tried to get her out too. Damned bleeding heart. She gave him her same 'have a gold star' smile, and then pulled out a match.

I could feel the fire singe me as I ran. Into the truck, down the street, to the firehouse, into my beetle, down another street, into my house, into my room; running like a man possessed, possessed by the burning figure of an old woman. My only salvation the glass container, I took one more than I needed to get to sleep. Just one too many that night, and just one too many every night that followed, it never killed me. "Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed." I felt dully immortal after every morning that I awoke with nothing but a headache to show for my half-hearted attempts at oblivion.



I tried to console Montag, tried to slow the inevitable. I know I would have just sent any other fireman off to the asylum, but Montag became different the moment Mrs. Pfirman smiled at him. He had her mark of approval, I had lost it. "Envy eats nothing but its own heart." My selfish sub-conscious wanted to bring him back to the dark foolishness of society.

It didn't work, he wouldn't return. I couldn't understand it. I told him not to worry. I told him he could come back. He could assimilate. He didn't _want_ assimilation. Why? The question nagged at me until I switched on the monster in the back of the firehouse.

The monster held all information that had ever been burned and kept tabs on everyone in the city. The machine made me the closest to omniscient as possible. "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." With this greatness I found that Montag's influence lived next to him for a time. Named Clarisse McClellan, she had also come from a family of odd ones. They had probably contacted Mrs. Pfirman. Damn them. Did she just keep me alive so that I could become entangled in her web? Paranoia seized me. That old witch, she held me in her power still. I made it worse, letting her die there. I have no control over the dead. At least, that became my obsessive thought. She was behind it, not ashes blowing through the dead city.



Three calls came in on Montag. One came in from his own treacherous wife. "Et tu?" My wild mind devised a plan to make Montag pay. Pay for becoming all that I was supposed to be, all that I had betrayed. I drove to his house with the glee of a vicious child burning an ant. I watched with triumph in my eyes as he unleashed fire upon his house.

He turned to me, a frightened little animal. Pitiless, I unleashed my bladed tongue upon him. I found his friend who had made him clever (undoubtedly –to my mind, still drunk with my conspiracy- another ploy of Mrs. Pfirman's) and threatened to burn him too. Montag turned the flame thrower on me, and I felt my heart flutter. Deeply afraid, yet morbidly curious, I taunted him still. Did I want to die?

"We never burned right."

It never mattered after that sentence.



After moments-years-lifetimes I found myself here. A library composed of all the books I have ever burned or ordered burned. I cannot tell you how I know this. It doesn't even feel like something I should question. I sit at a large and comfortable chair that burned in Mrs. Phirman's house. Her reading chair, no doubt. I hold this manuscript in my hand and I write it ceaselessly. I never grow hungry, never tired, never do my words stop. I cannot put down the pen for I can feel the hound, curled up in the dark corner, just watching. I cannot leave until I write down everything I read, everything I know. For a man who never believed in a god, this feels a lot like Hell.


End file.
